When Mexico City became a federal entity in 2016, its first constitution was drafted with online petitions, a city-wide survey and collaborative editing, then debated by a 100-member Constituent Assembly. 341 petitions drew more than 270,000 signers; the charter was approved on 31 January 2017 and took effect in September 2018.
For most of the twentieth century Mexico City, as the Federal District, was governed directly by the federal government; its residents elected their own head of government only from 1997. A federal constitutional reform in 2016 turned the district into Mexico City (CDMX), a federal entity with its own constitution, a unicameral Congress and elected mayors (alcaldes) for its sixteen boroughs in place of the old delegations.
The reform required a Constituent Assembly to adopt the city's first constitution on the basis of a draft prepared by the head of government, Miguel Ángel Mancera. Mancera chose to open the drafting to the public, and asked the city's innovation office, the Laboratorio para la Ciudad, to design the process.
The online platform reportedly cost about $15,000 to build, plus outreach, kiosks and devices; overall costs of the process are not reported in the sources reviewed. The constitution itself defines public goods as rights: among them the right to the city, a healthy environment, priority for pedestrians and cyclists, leisure time, animal protection and recognition of the city as plurilingual and pluricultural; Article 57 incorporates the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The petition phase received 341 proposals. According to the case study, they gathered 274,644 unique supporters and 427,815 signatures in total; four petitions passed 50,000 signatures and 14 were incorporated into the draft — for example a sixteen-year-old's petition on rescuing the city's rivers, which became part of Article 16. The organisers estimate that the Constituent Assembly approved about 84% of the co-created content by the required qualified majority.
The assembly approved the constitution on 31 January 2017; it was published in February 2017 and entered into force on 17 September 2018, when the first city Congress took office, followed by the first head of government under the new charter on 5 December 2018. The charter is often described as one of the most progressive in Latin America. How much of its content is attributable to crowdsourcing, rather than to the drafting group and parties, is not independently measured.
341 petitions with more than 270,000 unique signers, about 30,000 survey responses; 14 petitions were incorporated into the draft. The Constituent Assembly approved the constitution on 31 January 2017; it entered into force on 17 September 2018.
The participatory drafting ended when the draft went to the Constituent Assembly in September 2016; the assembly dissolved after adopting the constitution on 31 January 2017. The charter remains in force, amended by the city Congress.
Petitions to the drafting group were graduated by signatures: 5,000 brought a formal legal analysis, 10,000 a presentation to drafting-group members, and 50,000 a meeting with the mayor, who committed to include the proposal in the draft. 341 proposals were submitted and 14 petitions were incorporated.[1]
The Constituent Assembly had 100 members: 60 elected by proportional representation on 5 June 2016, 14 chosen by the Senate, 14 by the Chamber of Deputies, 6 by the President and 6 by the head of government. It sat from 15 September 2016 to 31 January 2017.[1]
The organisers estimate that the Constituent Assembly approved about 84% of the co-created content; the share of the final constitution attributable to public input has not been independently measured.[1]